Monday, April 17, 2006

UPDATE: As of right now (8:53 EDT, April 17), there are 321 responses to the post. For those of my imaginary readers who have not clicked over and read it, it's basically asking people who believe in prophets to explain their justification for believing in some prophets and not others. He specifically mentions Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Mormons.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Monday, April 03, 2006

Everybody loves Condi

I must admit that I was a little nervous when President Bush nominated her for Secretary of State. I've always been a fan of her sharpness, but diplomats often can not afford to be too sharp. However, she seems to be taking the world by storm, as is evident from her recent trip to Great Britain.

Press, politicians, and protestors alike seem to be falling for Condi. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

I must confess, I do love falling back. But I hate springing forward a lot more. Gaining a free hour once a year is simply no compensation for losing an hour once a year. A lot of other people I know feel the same way. Why is that? One explanation might be the status quo bias (derived from prospect theory). The basic idea is that we tend to value things more if we think of them as something we own, rather than something which we don't. So, my resentment in April at losing an hour that is mine is greater than my gratefulness in October at gaining an hour as a gift. This suggests to me that there would be a lot of support for eliminating the system, so that we can all keep our hour in April instead of springing forward.

(Of course, another application of prospect theory might be that Americans have become used to the idea of daylight saving time, and would perceive its abolition as a loss. One thing prospect theory teaches is that the way any issue is framed or presented has a great impact on its popularity. So I am confident that this could be sold, one way or another.)

Daylight saving was, not as is commonly believed, instituted to help farmers. It was first enacted in the United States during the first world war, primarily to conserve energy. If people got up earlier, it was believed, they would use more natural light and less artificial light. Studies in the 1970s indicated that this resulted in Americans using about one percent less electricity each day, during daylight saving.

However, our lifestyles have changed dramatically since then. For one thing, our daily schedules have become less closely tied to the clock. Many more people are self-employed and make their own hours. For another thing, our useage of electric appliances is also less closely tied to the clock. For example, it is much more common now to have air conditioning running twenty-four hours a day during the summer, or in other words during daylight saving time. (And many more people have moved to the sun belt in recent decades.) More recent data suggests that the decline in electricity usage during daylight saving time is less than half a percent, or less. Even Kazakhstan has figured out that the economic benefits are insignificant.

Nevertheless, thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time will begin thre weeks earlier and end one week later next year. Well, if we like it so much that we want to extend it, why not just extend it through to the whole year? We did it during World War II, when year-round daylight saving was referred to as "war time." Or, we could just get up earlier. Right?

As for myself, I don't really care which way they change it. I just want it to stop changing. One time, one world, one love. End the imperialist rule of morning people! ABOLISH DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME!